Sorry, Not Sorry: Putting A Spotlight On The Twisted Entertainment Industry's Boys Club

When I was three, I saw the Original Star Wars in the theater, and it left such an impression on me that I can still remember it to this day. That was the start of my love of film/artistry. The next two sequels cemented it.

As I grew, it became all that I wanted, and I studied a lot of theater, working in various positions for many years. I also was a natural writer, so I began learning screenwriting in my twenties.

I had heard how women were treated in the film industry, well, every entertainment/artistic industry, but I knew that in my soul I wanted to create magic, somehow, some way.  After modeling for a bit, I then realized what it actually meant to be a young woman in the industry.

Sorry/Not Sorry, directed by Cara Mones and Caroline Suh, expands on the culture of silence and misogyny that permeates entertainment, where twisted, powerful men get away with almost anything.

“The Greatest Threat To Women Is Men”

The film begins with several male comedians, journalists and business owners discussing comedian Louis CK’s rise to fame. Many of them tote him as a “genius” in comedy and talk about his charisma and ability to draw an audience, as if he was some honey-tongued bard who could do no wrong.

Intertwined are the experiences of comedians Jen Kirkman, Megan Koester and Abby Schachner, along with other female journalists and performers, sharing their experiences with CK, and the fallout that followed his victims when they spoke out about it.

From the few shows of CK’s I’ve seen, he seemed to try to set himself up as a “feminist” of sorts, relaying to audiences that he was a girl dad, touting quotes as seen above, while “comically” warning audiences about the dangers of men.

At the same time, there was a disturbing and depraved dark humor, woven throughout his material, with just enough creep to make me question, does he actually believe in what he’s saying?

Little did we all know at the time, that the depravity and darkness in his shows turned out to be a live confession of who CK really was on the inside. 

Cis Male Privilege

Greenwich Entertainment/The New York Times

Women began the independent studio system around 1912 and flourished in it. Then, in the 1920’s, when men saw what a lucrative business it could be, they essentially stole it, using their existing privilege to push women out of the industry and back into homes. The men set up their own unions, and the system that we know it to be today. They created the misconception that film and business just wasn’t for women.

This culture is still alive today. Men have had so much privilege for so long, that it seems they have never had to evolve into self-awareness.  As such, they are blinded to the pain and trauma caused by their, and other fellow men’s disgusting behavior.

This mentality MUST be part of the reasons that so many of the men in this documentary stick up for and are surprised to hear that CK would do stuff like this.

Ask almost any woman, who isn’t also stuck in the delusional toxic masculine, and there would be no shock. We are taught to fear men from day one because of this privilege, and men like CK.

Quotes such as “It’s not a crime.”, “What did he do wrong? Ask for consent for non-contact?”, “Every comedian has their skeletons (do they?), but when it comes to telling the truth about one of our own, suddenly we shut up”.

Does “one of our own” mean from the perspective of all comedians or just male comedians? As it stands, non consensual exposure and masturbation actually is a crime.

But in the entertainment business, men stick with men so often, that much of the disturbing behaviors that do happen are rarely ever told. It becomes less about what the laws say, rather than this “boys will be boys” agenda that ultimately becomes, “you tell anyone what happened and you are ruined”.

When victims do speak up, especially women, there comes this outrageous backlash by their peers and ignorant fans, who use toxic rape culture’s baseless assumptions that she was ”just looking for money”, or was “a climber”.

Hush culture has been a bane to women and minorities in all sorts of business and is systematically keeping them down and silenced. The amount of privilege it takes to maintain a world and industry ruled by this culture, then feign shock about it, is very telling.

Greenwich Pictures/The New York Times

After CK admitted that all of what his victims said was true, men still jumped to help him get back his career just nine months later.

Noam Dworman, owner of The Comedy Cellar in NYC, when asked why he secretly invited CK to perform after CK admitted to his deviant behavior, states, “Everybody I know, knows people who’ve done things they should be ashamed of. The idea that you have the right to impose on a private business, who’s employing a free person to perform, in front of people who want to see him…that is where I was really drawing my line”.

Except, from what I understand, many of the people who saw CK that evening were surprised and didn’t want to see him.

This Rolling Stone article from 2018 illustrates Dworman’s evasive presentation, on why he allows people like CK and Aziz Ansari to reappear, after they have shown themselves to be predators.

He seems to shift the focus towards more of a “free speech” issue, rather than taking any responsibility for giving these known perpetrators another platform. He also seems to wash his hands of responsibility with a “what can you do?” attitude.

The writer of the Rolling Stone article, Lily Dancyger, beautifully sums up the dereliction of Dworman’s comments stating: “Customers who don’t want to condone his behavior by watching him perform aren’t objecting to the man’s art or threatening his freedom of expression. They’re objecting to the perpetuance of a culture that leaves it up to women to remove themselves from unsafe environments rather than working to make those environments safer.”

Whether people choose to acknowledge it or not, if they don’t use what power they have to denounce or put a stop to deviant behavior, they are complicit in letting it continue.

 IN ALL HONESTY…

Greenwich Entertainment/The New York Times

Sorry/Not Sorry is an eye opening look at just one example of the environment of toxic fear and intimidation held up by privileged men in the entertainment industry.

I want to commend Megan Koester, Jen Kirkman, Abby Schachner and all of those who had the courage to come forward, knowing what this would mean for their careers, while facing hate mail, death threats and toxic ignorance on social media, to tell the truth. It is people like yourselves who are the reason that all this noxious “hush” culture can, eventually, be changed.

My heart aches for his victims, and the idea that women in entertainment must accept this behavior in order to “fit in”.

Koester talks about getting out of the industry, because she no longer wants to deal with deviants and their protectors, like this. That genuinely resonated with my own hesitancy to join the industry, as an artist in film.

Big entertainment runs on its own rules. There is no accountability yet on pay, racism, sexism, office politics, safety of those employed from assault, rape or other humiliating, violent behaviors of men in power.

What Mones and Suh have done by creating this visual collage of The New York Times report, amplifies its message while giving us real faces of the people who were traumatized by CK, so they aren’t just words on a page.

Make no mistake, what CK did was sexual violence. He was not sorry. He was just sorry he got caught. Regardless of “how bad” the assault was or is, does not exclude him from being a sexual predator, who should be blacklisted from the privilege of a lucrative and rare job in entertainment.

CK knew it was wrong, but decided to keep doing it anyway. That was his choice, and the blame for that belongs to him and all the other enablers who continue to support him, and look the other way.

The real truth is that there are plenty of working and non working artists, in and out of the industry, that wouldn’t do what CK did. The pool of possibilities is virtually endless, so there’s no need to rehire people who deviate from professional, respectful behavior.

This film, is less a documentary, than an open discussion. The ending leaves plenty of room for all of us to think about it, look inside, and decide if we really want to choose the ethical path towards truth, or continue to stay willingly blind for money or celebrity.

As artists, we need to organize, call for more legislation over the beast that these industries have become, or come together to create our own businesses that foster real change for working artists.

As audiences we need to hold these people accountable by not giving money towards the perpetrators and the businesses who choose to look the other way.

The system as it is now, will not sustain itself. It is up to all of us, especially other men, to call this stuff out and quit punishing women for the vulgar acts of powerful men, who outright refuse to respect us and treat us as equals.